Claude Code now looks across all managed settings sources for MCP allowlist/lock policy and warns admins when a lower-priority source is being ignored
What
Organizations can control which MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers Claude Code is allowed to use through settings like allowManagedMcpServersOnly and allowedMcpServers. Previously these were read from a single merged settings object. Now:
- Claude Code computes these values by combining the highest-priority settings source (the "slot") with the list of admin policy tiers, so a policy set only in a lower-priority admin settings source can still take effect even if there's no explicit override in the higher-priority one.
- If the top-priority settings slot doesn't explicitly set
allowManagedMcpServersOnlyto false, Claude Code now falls back to an allowlist derived from the admin tiers rather than ignoring it. - A new startup warning lists any MCP-related policy keys that are set in a lower-precedence managed settings source and are therefore not being applied, and points admins to the
/statuscommand to see which keys are affected.
Why
Before this change, an MCP allowlist or lock configured only in a lower-priority admin settings file could be silently ignored if it wasn't also set at the top level, leaving organizations less protected than intended. Now the policy is inherited correctly, and when a setting is still being shadowed by a higher-priority source, admins get a clear warning instead of a silent gap.
The entry above is what we published on the day. These lines were added later, as Anthropic's own pages caught up, and they sit beside the original rather than replacing it.
* **`allowedMcpServers`**: Claude Code honors a parent-supplied allowlist when no admin list is in force. `allowManagedMcpServersOnly` doesn't block it, because the lock enforces whichever list wins as the managed value, including a parent…claude-apps-gateway see the edit
From an admin source below the winner, the two sandbox locks still apply, and `allowManagedPermissionRulesOnly` still blocks parent-supplied allow rules and `additionalDirectories`. On Claude Code v2.1.273 or later, the MCP server lock als…claude-apps-gateway see the edit
Anthropic's documentation has since written up allowedMcpServers, on Claude apps gateway for Amazon Bedrock, Claude Platform on AWS, Google…
Fixed allowManagedMcpServersOnly, deniedMcpServers and disableClaudeAiConnectors set via MDM or managed-settings.json being ignored when…